Jack Wallen guides you through deploying a Discourse server in your LAN to keep the lines of communication open for your project teams.
Project management would struggle immensely without effective and constant communication. It doesn’t matter if you’ve used the perfect project management platform – maybe Yes, Trello or asana – because without effective communication those projects will stall and fail.
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To do this, you need to use some form of communication for your teams. One such option is Discourse, which can be used to create effective communications for communities, teams, and users. Discourse can be used for things like feature requests, team communication, discussion, and connection. It’s highly customizable, includes powerful management tools, gives you full ownership of your data, and doesn’t lock you in. Hosting it on-premises keeps your data safe.
I’m going to walk you through the process of deploying this powerful server using Docker.
What you need to successfully implement Discourse
To successfully implement Discourse, you need a server that supports Docker, which can be Linux, macOS, or Windows, a domain name pointing to your hosting server, an SMTP server, and Docker. As for the SMTP server, you can always use Google’s SMTP servers.
Google’s SMTP servers
If you happen to need to use Google’s SMTP servers for your Discourse server, you must first create a app password for your google accountand you must use the following data:
- Server Address: smtp.gmail.com
- Requires SSL: Yes
- Requires TLS: yes, if available
- SSL port: 465
- TLS Port: 587
You use your Gmail address as the username and the app password you created as the password.
Implement discourse?
Log in to your server that will host Discourse. I assume you already have Docker installed; if not, you can always refer to my tutorial to get it started.
First create a new folder with the command:
sudo mkdir /var/discourse
Go to that folder and then clone the Discourse project with:
git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse_docker.git
Go to the newly created directory with:
cd discourse
Run the installation script with:
./discourse-setup
You may need to run the script with elevated privileges. For example, on both Linux and macOS, you can run the script with:
sudo ./discourse-setup
In Windows, you need to open the terminal window with administrator rights.
During installation, you will be prompted to enter your domain name and your SMTP server information. Make sure you answer these questions correctly. If you do make a mistake, you can always run the command again to fix any issues.
After you answer the questions, the Discourse deployment is complete. After a moment, you should be able to access the Discourse website, where you can create an administrator account and start configuring the communication server to perfectly suit your needs.
That’s all it takes to add a powerful communication tool to amplify your project management efforts. Giving your team members the tools to easily keep the lines of communication open will help them work more effectively and efficiently.
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